Sunday, August 23, 2009

A beautiful day today, and we have had 5 eggs! Unfortunately one of those eggs was on the coop floor and one was laid in the afternoon behind the vegetable patch (where chickens aren’t supposed to be in the first place!) I was hoping we would be lucky enough to have very smart girls who would all use the nesting boxes, but Gladys is a little too clever and wants to hide her eggs now. We at least found out that she is the one laying the very, very speckled eggs.

Harriet has it all figured out. She laid an afternoon egg and went back to the nest box to do it. What a clever girl! She gave us a beautiful small brown egg.

So who isn’t pulling her weight? I think that Elsie is still a bit little to be laying as her comb isn’t anywhere near as big as the other girls. I think she may even be substantially younger than the other hens, even though she seems to be highest in the pecking order most of the time.

It is such a nice day that the chickens have spent a substantial amount of time dust bathing. They let me get right up close and take a video of their dirt flying everywhere.

Video - Dust Baths

I have been trying to use up some of our eggs and have made some quiches using our home grown silver beet and parsley. I even made my own pastry since that used up an egg as well. They’re still in the oven, but if they turn out I will share my recipe!